Sunday, 29 July 2007

US$10,000 - A humble beginning

The only reason a great many American families don't own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments. ~Mad Magazine

Money earned to date: $0.42

I'm not gonna brag about how rich I am or how much money I've made. To be honest, there is nothing to brag about. I'm as broke as a gumball machine in Siberia. Not looking down on Siberians or anything like that but you get the picture. They're resilient people, i can't even endure air-conditioning without freezing myself over.

I don't make much from my day job and i don't save much either. Added to the fact that the place I'm living in has so much to indulge in; gadgets and gizmos, wining and dining, movies, girls (and the late-night beer due to the lack of them), it all adds up to the visuals of the New Poor. What is the New Poor? Guys like us belong to the new poor. We earn money, but we don't save it. We spend it on necessities that end up not really necessary. We don't fall into the income bracket that enjoys benefits and subsidies, and yet we have so much bills to pay that losing our jobs will put us in a disastrous situation. Sounds familiar? Maybe we have something in common.

So you might be wondering if this is another of those get rich quick websites that bang on the "Fake it till you make it" drums. Its not. I have no exact idea on how to make US$10,000 online. Notice that i wrote "no exact idea". There are a couple of loose ideas floating around in my untidy head that i need to sort out. But its all within the likes of the following:

Ways I am going to hit the US$10,000 target

Identify a theme. Identify a target audience. Create a website with attractive content that is link-worthy, genuinely and honestly enlightening or refreshing.

Encourage collaboration, discussions and sharing based on that attractive content.

Identify merchandise that can be sold, which is related to these content. Judge from responses of these discussions and collaborations on how far these merchandise can be sold.

You have content, you have traffic, you have merchandise. Time to bank on these to pull off another source of income: Affiliate marketing.

Monitor traffic, discussions and trends to see how far the whole money game can go.

These actions might change course or need to be refined along the way. Thats fine, because all action plans require monitoring to ensure targets are hit.

If you are interested in what i'm doing, stay tuned.

Meanwhile, I am going to put a counter at the top of my page to state how much I have earned thus far. I don't know how far this is gonna take me, but at least we all learn how to get there.

Websites I visit daily

Who am I?

30 year old Internet Marketing Guy responsible for E-Commerce operations in a global electronics distribution corporation. Has a keen interest in Photography, Music and Travelling.
When he's not analyzing web trends and pulling together e-marketing strategies, he watches Southpark while dreaming of guerilla marketing on the net.